The 2024 Newham conference at the beginning of the year was a day filled with speakers who provided enlightening and supportive approaches to high quality interactions in The Early Years. Kerry Murphy’s keynote talk – ‘Neurodiversity – Affirming Communication & Interaction’ – had a huge impact on me.

Kerry began by asking us “What is your communication identity?” and sharing a variety of examples on the big screen. It immediately highlighted how everyone communicates in different ways, and we don’t tend to make time to understand each other’s approaches. We also don’t necessarily adapt our way of communicating to effectively support each other.

Kerry then asked whether we had ever felt that our own forms of communication have “been looked down upon” or “judged”? Reflecting on this and my time in teaching, I thought of children I have worked with who, for example, communicated through gestures or without eye contact. Within their support plans there would have been targets such as - ‘To provide eye contact’. I now question why was this? At the time when the child would provide eye contact, perhaps through encouragement or even of their own accord, I would see this as progress rather than something that could have been difficult for them and not part of their ‘communication identity’. Giving thought to what Kerry was saying, I see that we were just teaching them to mask their true communication preferences.

Having now listened many times to a recording of the talk, and particularly the part where Kerry goes through the ‘Medicalised Model’, each time provided me with something new to think about. I wanted to reflect here on the term ‘Medicalised Model’ and its definition. It is upsetting to think how this has put people in education (and I’m sure in other professions) in the position of viewing children that are not following neurotypical pathways, as needing to be “fixed”. I think that without realising it, I was guilty of this. I now know and understand that the terms used within this model were something that certainly affected me and my outlook. I didn’t question the ways in which we were potentially supressing their communication identities.

When I look back on my practice and remember what was set in place for the children who didn’t follow neurotypical pathways, knowing what I do now, I recognise things needed to be done differently.  We were considering everything through a “neurotypical gaze” and seeing a successful time in education as being learning how to behave to fit the ‘norm’. Kerry mentioned how she has worked with a lot of settings on “setting goals for children” and that “they shouldn’t be for the convenience of others”. This provided me with another realisation that setting targets for the benefit of others is not unusual. I now have a better understanding about how I would reconsider my practice if I were to return to teaching.  

Whilst I worked in what I felt was a supportive and forward-thinking setting, Kerry’s talk gave me the opportunity to look back and think what could we have done better? I remember we had support groups called ‘Ready to Learn’. I am sure you can picture the purpose of the group just by the name. Whilst acknowledging the benefits of this small group, such as teaching key skills like sharing and respecting others, there were still elements of teaching children to sit still on the carpet with their legs crossed. While there was lots of support to help those children who found this difficult, on reflection we needed to work so that we and others understood their behaviours as opposed to trying to change them. Kerry spoke about how we must take care not to “train to eliminate or reduce” children’s behaviours. She questioned how therapies and support can be viewed through a ‘neurotypical gaze’ so that the child is taught to change their communication preferences to fit in with their neurotypical peers. Kerry said that positive changes are happening, for example in speech and language therapy many are working to be more ‘neurodiversity affirming’.

Kerry touched on the ‘double empathy problem’ during her talk. This theory was developed by Dr Damian Milton who recognised (as Kerry explained) that in communication between two people, one who is autistic and the other who is not, the person who has autism is the one who is considered to be “failing” in their ability to communicate. Kerry talked passionately about “closing the empathy gap” in which both communicators who “struggle to understand the communication style of each other”, would learn to recognise and accommodate each other’s differences. She highlighted the fact that we should be teaching all children about communication differences, taking the pressure away from neurodivergent children who otherwise must adapt their communication preferences to suit others.  

Kerry explained how it should be embedded in early years practice that we teach children that everybody communicates in different ways, to “support and close this empathy gap”. In my own experience of teaching, whilst we were encouraged to guide children to celebrate our differences, we never brought different ways of communicating into the discussion.

Kerry went on to discuss the theory of ‘Monotropism’, developed by Dr Dinah Murray, which is where, in Kerry’s example, an autistic child finds their attention hooked onto something that they are doing and can find it difficult to pull themselves away. She gave a useful analogy where she described children with lots of ‘antenna’ plugged into an activity within their interest and focus. Kerry then went on to describe how for neurotypical children, it is a simpler process to move their attention on as they were able to ‘unplug their antenna’ more easily, whereas for children who are neurodivergent, this was a more difficult process. She explained how they needed more time to unplug each of their antenna to be able to transition onto something else. Making sure we consider neurodivergent children’s “monotropic attention tunnel”, and how they find ‘detaching’ themselves from an activity more difficult, can help us to support children during the many transitions in the learning day.

I came away from Kerry’s keynote with a new sense of understanding about communicating with neurodivergent people and children. I look forward to learning more and being part of the change in helping break down the misconceptions and misunderstanding of communication between different neurotypes.

If you would like to know more about supporting neurodivergent children in the early years, you can read Kerry’s Beginner’s Guide to Self-Directed Neurodivergent Play. Kerry has also written a Little Minds Matter book: Supporting the Wellbeing of Children with SEND.